


a man who's sometimes

by hardscrabble



Series: little bird [ariadne who?-verse] [5]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen, POV Ariadne (Inception), Platonic Cuddling, ariadne ain't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 17:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19950142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardscrabble/pseuds/hardscrabble
Summary: Almost absently, Ari says, “Hey, Eames? Shut up,” because she’s thinking, reverse-engineering the problem. How can a forger get stuck on dreamshare when they're awake?





	a man who's sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> for inceptiversary 2019 trope bingo, prompt "skin hunger."
> 
> this is set in a part of the little bird 'verse I haven't written yet, during the first job Ari does with Arthur and Eames. title from "branches/bones" by NIN.

The mark is returned home from her spa appointment, a little woozy and hungry to start weeding through her own mystic library on dream interpretation, not like she’ll get anywhere but further off-track. Ari feels pretty good about the op, she thinks, as Eames pulls the hatchback into the parking lot. He’s quiet, but it’s not like she has much to say right now, either. A job done is a job done, and she has all the major takeaways written out.

They part ways inside the townhouse, Eames up to his office and Ari to the basement with her models. She types up a copy of their findings and sends it to Arthur’s encrypted personal account. He’ll catch it whenever he wakes up, halfway around the world. Satisfied, she digs into the plans for the main event, only surfacing when she’s hungry.

She slaps together dinner—cold pasta and cut-up raw veggies and a vinaigrette; it’s too hot to care much otherwise—and puts away three-quarters of it for Eames later. Except—Ari checks the microwave clock. It’s been hours since they got back, and—well, Eames doesn’t miss—

For a moment she stands at the foot of the stairs, mouth twisting, before she mutters, “Fuck it,” and heads up.

Eames is halfway down the third-floor hallway, pacing toward her. “Hey,” she says, and draws up short.

He’s stripped down to his boxers, which—because he’s Eames—are coral pink with a white chevron pattern. Which is unremarkable on its own, it’s not like the house has a dress code, but there’s the rest of his appearance—the whites are showing all around his eyes, for one. His hair is wild, like he’s been yanking on it—which he _doesn’t do_ —and his hands are flexing at his sides, tension all through his upper body.

But he still says, “Oh, good evening, little bird,” sounding only a little ragged—except he reaches out immediately, reflexively, and stops his hand a scant centimeter from her shoulder.

She’s better—a _lot_ better—than she was when she started in the business, _especially_ around Eames and Arthur, but she still finds herself feeling no little fondness for his forbearance when he looks like he’s been awake for a week before getting dragged through a hedge backwards. His eyebrows are up in the middle, like he’s asking a question, and when Ari nods, he sighs silently and lets his palm rest on her upper arm, below the hem of her t-shirt sleeve.

“You’re _not_ having a good evening,” she says.

Rueful, he shakes his head. “Too sharp by half,” he mutters. “Who bloody taught you—”

“You did, asshole. What’s—”

Eames’s fingers tighten fractionally. “I’m—look, forgers—” He sighs again, and tucks his chin, eyes level and serious. “After Fischer. You remember falling?

 _Falling_. In Limbo, after Limbo, until by sheer force of will and some very stubborn teammates she yanked her own subconscious out of infinite freefall—

“Not exactly something to forget,” Ari says, bitter, but if he’s invoking _that_ — well, something’s wrong, deeply. “What can I do?”

“You’d hate it,” he says immediately, in that tone he gets—brush it away, deflect, downplay, downplay, _downplay_. He drops his eyes, focuses on his hand on her arm, his thumb moving over her shoulder. “I’ve no right to—”

“Mr. Eames,” says Ari, dropping into the business tone Arthur uses. “Tell me what I can do. As your _colleague_.”

Which are his words, kind of, from when she was falling.

Eames exhales, shaky, and without prompting Ari takes half a step forward, grabs his arm just above the elbow. It’s different now; _she’s_ different now. “Hey,” she says, and tries to soften it. “And as your friend. Duh.”

“Of course,” says Eames, but he sounds—less than convinced. “That job—I’m—with forging, it gets so—I only mean to say, it’s bloody embarrassing—”

“Explain it later,” Ari murmurs. “There’s something that could help. What?”

Eames squeezes his eyes shut, and then he looks at his own feet and mutters, “Contact. Skin-to-skin.” As if he’s ashamed. “Like I’m a bloody infant, like—”

Almost absently, Ari says, “Hey, Eames? Shut up,” because she’s thinking, reverse-engineering it. And Eames shuts up. She keeps her grip on his arm, loosens her fingers and flattens her palm, because—well, contact, skin-to-skin, he said.

The dream hadn’t been architecturally difficult. A single level, broken up by the gauzy sort of nothing that separate scenes in natural dreams, from jewelbox patisserie to art gallery to sunny patio to fundraising gala. The critical part had been Eames himself, forging the mark’s friend, then her cousin, then her former classmate, then her date, and Ari following behind, staying out of sight behind projections but mentally recording every word they’d said—

And that’s four separate people in five minutes of realtime, an hour in the dream, and—

“Dude,” Ari says, when she blinks out of her thoughts; Eames huffs a breath. “How long—since we got _back?_ ” She punches his shoulder. “You should have—”

“I’d hoped it would pass,” says Eames quickly, “sometimes it does, it just—but it didn’t, and I’ve no possible—and you hate this kind of thing, it’s not—”

“Shut up,” she says again, and then, “Unless Arthur’s going to shoot me when he gets here.”

Eames laughs outright, only a little ragged. “Lord, no. He’d buy you flowers. Or breakfast, at one of your terrible morning establishments—”

“Well, good,” Ari says, because diner breakfast seems like a reasonable return. “Okay. So. Coworker sleepover, part two. Or three, or whatever. Are you hungry?”

“Couldn’t bear to eat,” he says, sorrowful. “Later, but right now it’s all—I’m—can we—”

Which is how she finds herself sitting at the edge of Eames’s bed—and Arthur’s, once he gets here. He’s turned back the sheets on his side. “Skin-to-skin,” she repeats, still thinking. “Is that—oh, because fabric can still hide a shift?”

“That’s it,” Eames replies. His voice is alarmingly small, in opposition to the lax way he’s lying down with both arms folded behind his head.

With her back to him, she shucks her t-shirt and lays it as neatly as she can on the chair in the corner of the room. She pulls off her jeans and ditches her socks. It’s—she doesn’t feel nearly as vulnerable as she might have. Maybe because her typical underwear situation offers more coverage than some bikinis, and the fabrics don’t _not_ match, at least, because you can’t fuck up solids— And besides, dreamshare professionality. You do what you have to, to get your team through. “You’re gonna have to live with the underwear,” she says.

“Wouldn’t have thought otherwise.”

Because it’s easiest to just bite the bullet on the awkward stuff, she crab-crawls across the empty half of the mattress and tucks herself against Eames’s side.

He’s warm, because he is a mammal, and Ari starts to make herself small before remembering—skin contact is the point, which means doing an octopus impression instead. She loops her free arm over Eames’s torso, settles her head is on his shoulder as a pillow, and throws one leg over his.

Eames is motionless until she says, “Idiot. It’s _okay_ —”

—and then he _clings_ , all at once, arms coming up around her—one pressed down her spine, hand on her hip, and the other following her own arm across his stomach. He presses his mouth against her hair and mutters, “You’re a _jewel_ , little bird, an absolute—” He cuts off, that line of speech just doomed or something, and pulls her closer. It turns out there’s a lot of _closer_ to be; her stomach against his, her breastbone against his ribs, the musculature of his arms enough to blanket her entirely. It’d be too warm, but his room is set to run cold, and—

“You’re sure Arthur’s not gonna kill me for this,” she says.

“Certain,” he replies.

There’s a little silence, more or less comfortable, and then Eames’s speech center undergoes a controlled detonation, or something. He bursts into muttering, almost too fast for her to keep up with the actual words. “Christ, the entire—I can’t imagine what falling was like, but this, when you get stuck in the _feeling_ of being so many other people, and your skin never feels right because it never feels the _same_ for more than five minutes at a time, relative, and—it’s like _ants_ , on the inside, and the only thing that’s sure to wipe it is—is—steadiness, a single input, and I’m sorry it’s you, little bird, I know this is probably killing you—”

She’s okay, actually. She’s physically comfortable, and emotionally stable, and it’s good to know she’s able to pay back Eames for the two nights of kicking him in the shins with something this simple.

“—and I’d go on about how I wish it were Arthur but I just need it to be _someone_ , and then I feel like a git because of course it’s not like that, like it sounds, it’s just—”

Eames is moving, almost continuously—little small-scale motions, rocking slightly, fingers skimming the nubs of her vertebrae. “—a fixed point, is…it’s not _about_ sex, it simply isn’t, but we’re so damnably hung up as a bloody _culture_ , and you don’t even like— I’m so terribly sorry—”

“Don’t be,” says Ari. “It’s not. I know it’s not. It’s practicality.”

“It almost pays off, that you’re nearly a robot,” Eames mutters.

“My programming’s shitty.”

Eames laughs, and it sounds almost normal, and she wants to cheer. “You’re—indescribable, little bird.”

She presses her palm against his sternum. “I do my best.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! I'm not sure yet if any of my other bingo prompt fills are going to be in the 'verse, but you'll be the first to know if they are.


End file.
